2009 Volume 5 Issue 1 Pages 68-78
Objectives. From the viewpoint of importance to construct local livestock manure treatment and utilization system with low environmental impact, there was required planning local manure treatment system by quantitative and comprehensive evaluation on environmental aspects and cost. We evaluated local dairy cow manure treatment and utilization system introducing centralized biogas plant using life cycle assessment (LCA) and cost analysis with optimization software and database construction on geographic information system (GIS) to confirm availability of LCA approach for local manure treatment system planning.
Results and Discussion. LCA approach was applied to case study, dairy cow manure treatment and utilization system at Yamada town in Chiba. As the results, it revealed that urine purification process at current manure treatment system was large impact at GHG emission. From the results of comparing GHG emission and total cost at each scenario, the alternative manure treatment and utilization system, utilizing manure compost depot for individual farm and introducing centralized biogas plant at west area was effective to reduce GHG emission. This approach was able to show the different types of equipments selection at system planning by objectives of scenario conditions. And it indicated introducing location for centralized biogas plant utilization, considered with nitrogen demands at local agricultural land. Furthermore, it calculated life cycle GHG emission by applying LCA including analyzing relation and link of several processes.
Conclusions. We showed LCA approach, using GIS and optimization software, is able to consider local livestock manure treatment and utilization system planning for low environmental impacts.